


The Anathema Amendment

by Anecdoche (so_psychso)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (I mean Michael's lichrally the definition so...), (starting from MAG101), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Canon Typical Fuckhands, Eye Trauma, Gaslighting, Jonathan Sims And The No Good Very Bad Forever, Kidnapping, M/M, Other, Whump, tags/chars to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:01:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21541756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_psychso/pseuds/Anecdoche
Summary: It had said - promised, even, to bring ruin, to not save him. Tomakehim not.In the end, though, Jon's not so sure it has succeeded.(On hiatus)
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Michael, Michael/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 55
Kudos: 158





	1. pretense; proposition

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes... you just need to write some very self indulgent Jon/Spiral fic. I can't speak to the consistency of updates nor the number of chapters, but I wanted to cast this line out and see what kind of audience I could reel in. What I can promise is incorrigible Spiral thirst and whump!Jon like nobody's business. We have fun here, lads...
> 
> **UPDATE: I am now offering writing commissions to support BLM, MFF, and various bail fund charities. 100% of proceeds will go to these charities. My rates are: ******
> 
> ****$3 for 500-600 words  
>  $5 for 1000-1200 words  
> $10 for 2500 words** **
> 
> ****If you are interested, please feel free to shoot a message over to my[tumblr](https://master-fiber.tumblr.com/)** **
> 
> ****Also please have a look at the[official commission post](https://master-fiber.tumblr.com/post/619694064787406848/writing-commissions-for-blm-bail-funds-hey) for fandoms, allowable content, etc** **

He really can’t be certain, given the fact he’s never undertaken a skin care routine, himself, but surely, _surely_ this is not… the right way to go about it. Not that he’s keen to bring it up with his captors. Or really able to, for that matter. Aside from scant meals provided once a day (whatever _day_ means, anymore) he’s effectively gagged and left to squirm and whimper and pant through his nose in the darkness. 

Adhering to no particular schedule he can decipher, the monotony of his captivity is broken only by the manhandling of himself from his restraints as a dozen sets of cool, plasticine hands swarm over his body, smothered him in thick globs of lotion. It leaves him feeling tacky to the touch, skin lathered in layers of grime (bathing is hardly a luxury he’s afforded), moisturizer, and the unshakable phantoms of roaming fingers and palms without lifelines, clutching and prodding and _soothing_. Till he feels plastic, himself, his body suffocated by its own skin, so foreign against his bones and the air, that he half wonders if they’ve already flayed him.

They haven’t, of course, he knows this. And then he _knows_ , well and truly, and by virtue of the one entity that spells the very antithesis of clarity, altogether. 

And, as it is wont, it announces itself in a maelstrom of merciless, mirthful echoes, its presence careening into the vague placidity of the Dancers’ den with as much grace as a ten car pile up. Really, it’s a miracle Nikola and her ilk aren’t alerted to its arrival, unfathomable though it may be. 

Michael is hardly silent, hardly _is_ at all, and it _is_ , decidedly, very _not_ as it emerges unseen - presumably from its favored door - and prowls around him in the dark, discernible only by the oh so pleased sneer Jon can practically see against his eardrums. 

“Oh - oh _Archivist_ ,” it leers, and laves a dozen tongues around each syllable.

Then it pauses, drawing poise into its own ellipses, like strychnine into a syringe.

At last, like it’s been holding its breath, it offers, “But what will we do now?” 

Crying out, muffled and pathetic, Jon jerks against his restraints as the thin skin over his left temple is _not_ split, and blood slogs into his nose. The smell of it, anyway, sibilant like battery acid. Very much in spite of himself, his week’s-dulled senses welcome it as an interim from the unhurried decay of his flesh into the supple hide his captors so covet. As _something_ where it’s been _nothing_ for so long.

Michael tuts, clicking teeth against more teeth - or, possibly an elbow? a sternum? there are so many sounds - and soothes another bruise down Jon’s nape, its knuckles rippling. After seeming ages without touch beyond the featureless caresses of mannequins, Michael feels _too much_ , and Jon’s body writhes like a riptide. 

“Goodness,” marvels a whisper on several thousand iterations of itself. “What _have_ they done to you? I’ve never felt so appreciated, and we’ve barely _discussed_ anything.”

Jon growls into his gag and thrashes away from Michael’s touch.

“Ah, hm. I suppose you’re right,” the creature hums. “You do need to speak, don’t you? And I would _love_ to hear your wrecked compulsions. How long has it been? Are you _hungry_ , Archivist?”

It’s so many, battering questions at once, and the confluence of them with Michael’s indivisible attention is stirring up an excruciating migraine behind Jon’s eyes. He can only offer a groan, resigned and plaintive, and Michael’s responding glee borders on the indecent. And then decimates those borders just for fun.

“ _Wonderful_ ! Oh, Archivist, you’re too kind. _Really_. 

“Now,” it continues, with an uncanny air of conviction. “Let’s see about _thi-i-is_.”

It draws out its tone in tandem with the wadded length of fabric it coaxes from Jon’s mouth, two fingers protruding from the dim light of his cramped prison and acquainting themselves quite intimately with what little personal space he has. Reacquainting him, it seems, with the depths of their deftness. 

“ _What_ \- what -” Jon coughs, voice ragged with disuse, and yet somehow immediately argumentative.

“So you _were_ listening!” Michael effuses, to his right and from above at once, and then not at all as its voice dips low into the damp hollow between Jon’s collarbones. A chorus without tangible chords strumming out the syllables.

“You’ve made this _so_ much easier. We won’t have to start from scratch.”

It giggles in a way that suggests itself privy to something Jon is entirely not, and that it will inflict upon him, regardless. Like a woundless cut. Though the one at his temple still bleeds, steadily.

“What - do you - _want_ ,” Jon finally manages, his tongue catching against his teeth, flicking for a compelling spark, but he tastes only ash. 

Michael sighs, and the succinctness of the sound jars worse than any of its humors thus far. Its pantomimed humanity is, perhaps, the most untenable of all its delusions. 

“I - hm,” legitimate hesitation sullies its smug tone, but it’s quick to find its footing. Easy enough, that, when there’s never any to begin with. 

“I… _understand_ ,” it says, haltingly, “I do little in the way of assisting _that_ at all, really I do, Archivist. You cannot begin to appreciate the discomfort it causes me, but let’s not enjoy those particulars just yet. Pretense is my least favored deception, by far.”

“What -?”

“At the moment, you are very… _objective_ ,” Michael does not explain, and even sounds a bit impatient. “There are specifics for you, results and aftermaths that I, personally, would prefer not transpire.”

It pauses for a moment, a tenuous slither of seconds that shivers up the back of Jon’s neck.

“I’ve never fancied the Stranger,” Michael offers at length, and sounds like it’s testing the waters of its own monologue. “There’s… too little to convolute in its wake, a brand of confusion I _truly_ abhor.

“Or maybe I’m just jealous!” It laughs. “Who _knows_ , Archivist.” 

And in the reeling horror of its soundless giggles, Jon fails to feel Michael descend on him again. 

And, this time, it does cut, deeply gouging the blades of its fingers around his jaw, forcing his gaze in a direction he can’t presently conceive of. He - dizzily, _sickly_ \- surmises it must, at least, be where Michael presently resides, so that’s good enough. Enough to ground him through the nausea of its attention.

“And, surely,” it says, as Jon struggles to listen, “you would like to know our stipulations. Your Eye does so enjoy the possibility of an outcome, and I can appreciate the occasional wager.”

It loosens the grip of its fingers, an invitation for inquiry.

“What do you mean?” Jon obliges, hoarse and scared and _tired_. 

This is so so _too much_ after days and weeks in the clutch of the Stranger. A monsoon of useless facts and words, like bone scraps where he _gnaws_ for flesh.

“Absolutely nothing!” Answers Michael, delighted. “You’ll have to be more specific. Or don’t. I’d prefer if you weren’t. I like the not’s, as you know -”

“What,” spits Jon, “- do you - _mean_.”

And, for a second, a blink, Jon sees his tormenter, impaired by static in the great twisting of itself, its stalking, laughter _self_ rendered immobile under duress of his scrutiny.

“Mm,” Michael hums, when the moment expires back to the cracked foundation of their clay and carnage, and though Jon can no longer see it, he needn’t his eyes to understand the scowl littering over Michael’s purring grin. 

“That wasn’t very lovely of you, Archivist.”

Then it scoffs, tenacious as ever.

“Is that what your poor Statements endure?” It goads. “A bit like… have you ever chewed tinfoil? But that’s your nature, isn’t it. So _unlovely_ . Although, beauty and the beholder, isn’t it? And I’m the - how did your master put it - irritant? Yes. But you’re _quite_ infuriating, yourself. Really, I’m just vexing by comparison.”

“What the _hell_ are you babbling about?” Jon interrupts, gaining vehemence by the second, fueled by a latent adrenaline and furious with everything he is _not_ learning of Michael’s intentions.

The creature howls, quietly, giddily, in his right ear.

“You, of course!” It answers. “It’s always about you, Archivist. You, this stupid little fulcrum that far, _far_ too much isn’t balanced on.”

Jon has no words for that, plenty of questions, sure, but no way to formulate them. Worst of all, he’s terrified his inaction is hardly the result of Michael’s presence. 

And then, with a frankly _absurd_ frankness, Michael plants itself in full view of what scant periphery Jon has, its round, cruelly kind face split in half by a fractal leer that almost… frowns, as if in deliberation, while teeth and lips taper off into infinity beyond the meager, cartilage borders of the entity’s tangible body.

“I’m going to ruin everything,” it says. “The _irritant_ , as it were.

“I’m quite good at that, you know,” it adds, a withering punchline that serves only its own amusements. “And I think you’ll _really_ come to appreciate it.”

“You’re going to - to what, save me?” Jon ventures perilously. 

Because, like beach glass amidst rubble, bits of sense riddle the inundation of this insanity, and though the resulting mosaic is hardly coherent, it’s _something_.

“If that’s what you want,” Michael says. “Although I wouldn’t put faith in whatever _you_ have in mind, Archivist. Blindness, as it were -” then it laughs, _laughs_ like shattering marrow, a rending glee that sutures itself back up only to tear apart again.

“Oh _oh_ ,” Michael wheezes - a _disgusting_ sound, “you should tell your smitten little assistant about that when you get back. He’ll _love_ the poetry in it I’m sure.”

“When?”

“You really don’t believe me, do you, Archivist?”

Jon barks out a bitter laugh of his own.

“Must you _really_ ask?”

“I suppose not, but _you_ probably should.”

Jon blinks into the darkness, where he thinks Michael perches and watches and taunts. Those fingers have retreated, and he stupidly ignored the foresight to follow the path of their retraction. 

“It’s hardly a wager if you don’t know what you’re placing bets on,” Michael sighs, when it catches on to Jon’s confusion. 

“What exactly is that?”

“Yourself, of course.”

“Come again?”

“No.”

Well. Alright then. Bold of him, wasn’t it, to assume these answers would illuminate anything. But if Michael truly is amenable to his questions, he’ll just have to ask as many as he can get away with, even if the answers come up moot. Sometimes, there’s satiation enough in the asking. Sometimes.

Suddenly, then, it becomes apparent there’s… a sort of deadline. Surely Michael would not have come at this exact moment were something not suspended in a balance, presumably of life and death. _His_ life, and his death, at the hands of Nikola. Her whispers have been awfully more conspiratorial of late, her caresses lingering longer. Savoring.

“They’re - they’re going through with it,” he murmurs, half to himself, half to whatever Michael might offer in return.

“Yes,” the entity says, uncharacteristically blunt.

“And - and you could - you could kill me before they had that chance,” Jon reasons, frantic with clarity and the confusion that Michael does not seem keen to traverse that particular plan. “You could ruin their ritual, and have a nice little _fuck you_ to the Eye while you’re at it.”

“The idea had crossed my mind, Archivist, yes”

“But?”

A scoff, grounded and singular.

“But where’s the fun in that?

“I _enjoy_ you, Archivist,” the voice emerges, again, followed by the mouth, the grin that frames it, the unassuming body that, for all its lies, could be the man Jon heard on the tape. With Gertrude. With _out_ the echo.

Christ… there’s _that_ , too, isn’t there… 

“And I wonder,” Michael says before Jon can follow that train of thought to its careening off of a cliffside of oh so perilous speculation. 

And it is so close to Jon’s face, Michael, but its breath is hardly felt against the skin that has not been his for _so_ long when it murmurs, “What could you do for me?”

Jon whimpers, can’t help it, is burning at the back of his throat with the _ache_ to compel Michael to reveal itself, reveal what it has unearthed, what parts it played in Gertrude’s betrayal. 

Instead, he holds his ground and manages, “Is that mine, then?”

Michael stills, and then cocks its head at a diseased angle, acute and obtuse all at once, with a vertebrae jut claiming the only rightness to speak of. 

“Yours?”

“My - my _part_ in this, my wager,” says Jon. “You could have me right now, and you know it, tear me up, devour me.”

“You couldn’t _begin_ to taste the pleasure of that, Archivist,” Michael answers dreamily, eyelids drooping, burdened, probably, with some indulgent, far off vision of Jon’s screams.

“But that’s not it,” Jon says, almost insisting, almost unsure if he’s caught the correct thread of this, caught _on_ to the game. “You’ve no use for slaves.”

“I do prefer my acolytes.”

“So that’s it, then?” Jon almost sniffs, _almost_ wary that this is far too easy. “You… free me. And, what, earn my favor? A debt?” 

Michael does an awful thing with its awful mouth that looks as much like an admonishing frown, but could just as thoroughly be a predatory grimace. How it oscillates seamlessly between the two sets Jon’s skull flaring all over again.

“And here I thought you Beholding types were good listeners,” it sighs, and lazily presses its palm beneath Jon’s chin, forcing his jaw up, and his gaze with it. 

Jon swallows, the force of which bulges his throat out against the blades that haven’t yet sprung.

“W-what?”

“I’m going to make you useless, Archivist,” it says plainly. “To the Stranger. The dance. To the _machinations_ . Because - to all of it, to everything right _now_ \- you _Are_ . And so, I am going to make you _Not_.

“Not free,” it continues, amused, _bored_ , “not saved, maybe even barely _alive_ if I’m so inclined, but only that. And in your time, in the wake of whatever _freedom_ you manage to convince yourself of, you’ll come crawling to me. _That_ is our wager. 

“Or I could leave you to -”

And, here, Michael thrusts a single, very human finger into the air, and, as if summoned by cue, the distant clamor of jostling plastic and discordant voices kicks up, a sound Jon has begun to recognize when his captors bring meals for his unsated hunger. Or their hands for his skin. Save now there is an alien purpose in each footstep, in each laugh, a deviance from the familiarity he’s managed to eke out while here. 

Like a waltz in five count, something _new_ approaches, and he needn’t take three guesses to figure what it is.

“No,” Jon says, winded with disbelief, flushed with panic. “No, no, I - but I don’t even -”

“Know how we’ll go about this?” Michael grins. “Of course not, Archivist! That’s the _point_ . Play your cards, and hope you’ve got the better hand, that’s how it _works_.

“Of course, I’m always amenable to bending the rules, and I’m _sure_ we can think of some creative stakes. Although -”

It waggles that human finger as the decidedly _not_ ones press tighter around Jon’s neck.

“I’m not so sure we have time for that.”

“I - I -”

_Don’t know, I don’t know! I don’t know what you want, what you’ll get from this, what I’m risking. You’re the only damn answer, and I - don’t - know._

“I won’t let them have you,” Michael purrs, through the haze of Jon’s helpless inner warring. “But I would _so_ hate to inflict anything without your consent. Even _I_ have standards, and I’ll enjoy you far better if you ask.”

“I won’t beg for you,” Jon growls.

“Mm,” Michael purses its mouth, taps a finger to them and draws his smile wider with the resulting blood. “Perhaps not yet. But we’ll see, won’t we, Archivist?”

Jon says nothing, but his expression - as the tintinnabular screech of Nikola’s laughter floats from too closely away - belies him utterly, and Michael’s face all but splits in two (and two and two and two) with a satisfaction that could only be appreciated within the realms of _reverence_.

“Excellent,” the creature croons. 

And the inhuman hand at Jon’s throat loosens. And the human one comes to bear. And Jon watches - a hapless spectator as he has never before been - as the fingers elongate, swirling closer, laciniate nails weaving through his eyelashes, curling against sclera.

A suspension, then. Of all. Sensation, horror, ravenous intrigue and exhaustion and defeat and hope and the stupid, boundless blood at his wrists and temple.

“What do you see, Archivist?” Michael asks, from somewhere gone. From there and there and there and there.

Jon’s heart is in his chest. Jon’s heart is in his throat. Jon’s heart is in his pupils, their scant millimeters of pitch and awestruck dilation tearing, entirely, into vitreous iris as they are forced to give way to things that are not fingers, are not nails, are not are _not are not_ , and only _are_ inside him, scraping out the holes in his face, the light from his godless worship. 

“ _I - I don’t - "_

“Perfect,” comes the last breath before the screams start in earnest. 

And yet, through it all: “You are going to be _just_ perfect, Archivist.”

And the laughter resumes, and Jon graciously succumbs to a place that is _not_ , and the echoes follow him, dutifully, into its grasp.


	2. uncertainty; stipulation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man... yall were so nice last chapter tysm ;-;b Sorry updates might take a while, holiday retail is hell and I basically have zero free time. I hope this is a coherent chapter, it went places I wasn't expecting, but ain't that just writing for you
> 
> (also I'll be putting cw's/tw's in end notes for future chapters jsyk bc things will get a little.... Much at times)

He awakens to a wanting. An inundating, bone sick _ache_ for something, but not for anything with which he is familiar. Or even, he realizes, as his faculties return to him in stumbling increments, really anything at all. 

Though he hears: his own breath, thick in his chest. Smells: the stale must of sheets gone too long without a wash. Tastes: tangs of bile. Feels: the stark loom of his bedroom around himself. Sees: _all of this_. None of it provides a concrete whole, the lot of it just stuff and nonsense, a crucial fixture having been plucked raw from it, leaving him to flounder and scramble for pieces that have no fit among each other.

And there is nothing forgotten, exactly, just… displaced. 

The horrors of the Stranger, the inflictions of Nikola, it all beats dully behind his eyes as more of a… a happenstance, a vague recollection where he knows - or, assumes? - that it should scar upon his person in vivid, vicious detail. 

“ _Christ_ ,” he mutters, and his voice is blessedly solid, his exhaustion heavy on his tongue though it fails to suffuse his body properly despite all it has weathered. 

It’s as though he lags behind himself, half of him knowing how he _should_ be in this moment, the other struggling to keep pace, limp and confused in its own wake. 

Just as well, he’s not slept so thoroughly in weeks, and he’s half tempted to call the rest of the day a bust, roll over, and black out till things make better sense. As he does, however - roll over, that is - a swift _sting_ jumps out from his temple, skittering into his adjacent eye and toward the back of his skull. He bolts upright with a bitten off whimper, abandoning all hope of going back to sleep as he traces the tender side of his face. 

He… did remember everything, waking up. Here. Away from Nikola. Away from the Stranger, the Dance, the Skin, every awful thing of import he’d had seared into his mind over ages of torment at the handshands _hands_ of beings that were not beings. 

He does not, however, remember _this_ . Why _his_ hand does not come away bloodied despite the warmth that coats his fingers, trickles down his cheek and jaw. Up his nose, pushing out the relative comfort of his stale, too-long-without-use bedroom mildew, and instead blooming sharp, astringent copper. 

Half hunched, almost fetal, he stares at his hand, _begging_ the blood to show itself, to explain the space between his skull where synapses flare, as though severed of a sneering and awful truth.

“I - I - d-don’t -”

He knows how to complete the sentence, he _does_ . But he _can’t_ because he also does _not_ , the rest of it, the _sense_ of it, carved out and its wound shoddily cauterized without hope of healing. Or. Healing properly, anyway. Nothing bleeds. But it _does_. 

It’s his mobile that eventually breaks him free of his stupor, insistent with a barrage of _vvv-vvv-vvv’s_ as a flurry of texts come in. 

Oh.

Right.

He’s back, isn’t he. Not… kidnapped anymore. Probably should have taken care of that first, napped later, though he suspects - with withering conviction, let alone concern - he had no choice in that matter. Can’t even say how he got home. That particular morsel exsanguinates in the blank space, too, though is just as frustratingly _bloodless_ as his head and hand. There’s not even a damn trace left for any of this. 

The phone. Yes. That’s easiest, that’s something tangible and - and… objective? His mind is reeling around words, words that struggle for sense, but that one fits, somehow, and burrows in further as he grabs his mobile and winces at the unreads. He thinks they total somewhere near a thousand. He _thinks_ , but his vision denies him the satisfaction of an answer, wriggling like it’s trying to get away from the blue glare, like it can’t quite focus. As a migraine threatens, he gives up trying to see the tiny number glaring back at him and unlocks the phone with stumbling fingers as more messages come hurtling in. 

Three, in fact, though it stabs a shard of ice behind his left eye to tally even that. He grits his teeth and pushes through it.

Three, he thinks, and refuses to even whimper at the responding _stab_.

_Three_. From Martin. Almost… all from Martin. 

He doesn’t read any of them. Can’t. The strain of the screen pulls suddenly a deep swell of nausea up from his empty, sour stomach, and he can only look long enough to know a few concrete facts:

  1. Martin is going to kill him when (if?) he goes in today.
  2. Tim didn’t message at all.
  3. Elias did. But only once.



It’s as he tries to open Elias’s message that the whole of his agony reaches a fever pitch, sending him over the side of the bed, retching bile onto the floor. Or - the sensation of it, anyway. He’s so empty there’s nothing to expel. Tears, at the very least, have the decency to make themselves tangible in his eyes, gathering, pooling, then dripping down his nose, swarming up his vision with blurry, indiscernible shapes of the whorls on his floorboards and an uncanny beat from the pulse pounding out through his head. 

He stays there awhile, relishing the comfort, the certainty of crying and keening. The simplicity of misery remains, as ever, a steadfast refrain in his life anymore, and if this is all he’s afforded at the moment, he’s damn well going to wallow. Damn well going to _enjoy_ it.

“And you do make such a _lovely_ martyr, don’t you, Archivist.”

A crescendo of warring pain careens through Jon’s heaving body; first, the desire to seize with terror, then the immediate instinct to whip his head up and _see_ the thing lounging by the window, draped there like a shade with as much implied obscurity.

It’s the latter that wins out, usurping whatever shreds of self preservation he hoped himself capable of, and, indeed, there sprawls (and sprawls and sprawls and sprawls) the thing, itself: Michael with a thousand teeth on display, though its lips only reveal a smattering grin from canine to canine. The rest is suggested, and most strenuously unwanted, into Jon’s comprehension, his tear-addled vision apparently not enough of a deterrent to prevent him from seeing the visage of disgusting impossibility Michael paints. 

For all its purpose, though, it reclines on the sill very… humanly. Partly, anyway. There’s an awful _vaulting_ to Jon’s sight, a shift to and from the more palatable manifestation of Michael’s body into the maddening terror of its ~~un~~ true nature, the bits that skulk just outside periphery. Now, it’s as if that periphery has gained a sentience all its own and keeps vying for Jon’s full attention, hoping to push out any semblance of normalcy to fill his eyes with madness incarnate. And only that. 

“Though I do prefer the golden calf,” Michael continues, purposefully ignorant to the maelstrom it has let loose onto Jon’s senses.

“The idolatry is _just_ perfect, don’t you think?”

Jon opens his mouth to do that, to think and say and - and respond. To… _something_ , but all that slips out is a meek whimper.

“Oh, I wasn’t really asking,” Michael says coolly, collected, though only in tone. 

The rest of the entity slithers apart as it departs the sill and shudders over to the bed. There, it crouches on too many knees and lifts Jon’s chin with a single finger that is also several. Feels like several. Feels like _burn_ and _cut_ and _deep deep deep inside_.

“That was more of a suggestion,” Michael continues, gazing down adoringly _, concerned_ almost. “You probably won’t want to think for a good long while.”

“What -”

_\- the hell are you talking about_ , Jon finishes inside his head, and groans heavily as the weight of the words burrow through his brain. 

“Yes, we’ve been over this, Archivist,” Michael sighs. Then, “Go on. You can do it.”

Jon scowls back, but his tongue jumps behind his clenched teeth, cajoled without his say so, _itching_ to ask. 

He does not indulge it, and instead growls, “Why are you here.”

It feels… not better exactly, not _sated_ , but something tells him not to trust his first set of instincts. It’s always better to second (third fourth _fiftieth_ ) guess oneself around Michael, in case it’s got inside your head and muddled things up for its amusement. 

Or.

Wait is that worse?

Regardless, Michael’s expression reveals nothing but revelling delight, and god knows the bastard finds as much pleasure in chaos as conformity to its machinations but -

_Stab_ , again, behind his eye, this time the other, and just as severe. 

“Ah, I see,” Michael says, giggling like it’s in on another private joke. 

Then, “Tell me, Archivist,” and here it drags Jon unceremoniously up, hand around his throat, and throws him gracelessly back onto the bed. 

It knocks the air loose of Jon’s lungs in a weak scream, his body refusing to comply to the pain and shock his mind _thinks_ should respond. Of the force, the blunt-blade fingers.

“What do you know?” 

The question drills through the shocked haze of _toomuchnotenough_ . Like a parasite. Like silver, wriggling flesh and cartilage, and when Jon returns from his stupor, it’s to the sight of Michael, _only_ Michael, the diaphanous splay of it filling him from tear duct to lacrimal. 

“I don’t,” Jon murmurs, the words arriving so easily.

“Would you like me to tell you?” Michael leers, and shifts its entirety to make Jon entirely too aware that it is, in whatever sense, straddling his waist.

“I don’t know.”

Again, so easy. So easy to _not_ in the presence of the thing that relishes it.

“And what of ruin, Archivist. What does that _mean_ for you.”

These are not questions anymore. These are _not_ , but there _is_ in his addled head: a spark, a malnourished gleed of something amidst the nothing.

“I - I don’t know,” and there is conviction in his stumbling, like something’s broken a bit, chipped and frayed. “But I’m going to find out. 

“I’m - I’m going to s-stop you,” Jon continues, and feels his fingers - wherever they are, he can’t see them, so they don’t quite exist do they - feels them clench to fists. “Whatever it is - that you’re - you’re doing. You won’t _win_.”

“And what happens, Archivist,” Michael smirks, and even its smile lines laugh, “what will you see if I’m doing nothing at all?”

“Then I’ll stop that, too,” answers Jon, steadily.

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

Then he cries out, Michael wrenching itself from view, and the world heaves around him, into his burning eyes like it’s even more of a strain than the Spiral, itself.

“ _Perfect_.”

And Jon gasps again, the familiarity of Michael’s smug words pummeling his already bruised head.

“You’ve… you’ve said that,” he grits out. 

He’d wanted to keep the revelation to himself, but the pain forbids it, grinds it through his teeth like meat amidst metal.

Michael cocks its head, acutely staring. So… familiar.

“Have I?” It asks, like it’s genuinely wondering.

“Yes,” Jon hisses. “Yes, yes! You did when - when you -“

He pauses. A mistake. Enough toomuch time for Michael to close the distance between them again, to inflict its fingers once more, and so _tenderly_ , too, like gilded lace, a brocade of gristle round his neck. Like tines of elegant cutlery at his lower lip, and just as keen to butcher.

“Go on,” it murmurs. 

“When you - I - you - wh -“

_When you saved me_.

He thinks it, he _does_ , skewers its certainty through one too many cortices, but it’s there and -

And Michael is not.

As oh so slippery recollection squirms beneath Jon’s mental grasp, shooting up tendrils, anchoring him to _that_ and _happened_ and _MichaeltookmefromtheStrangerbutIdon’tknowwhy_ , just as abruptly, Michael no longer inhabits the foot of his bed, its weight no longer arched across his hips. Or was it his shins? 

It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it's gone, and Jon knows something more and can piece together why Michael was here at all. And, in the same vein, why everything is so _goddamn_ impossible to parse. 

And how he got away from the Stranger.

And what remains of its ritual.

A word, then. Again. Against the tip of his tongue, the cliff’s edge of his already perilous cognizance. Starts with an ‘r’ but fuck all if he can grasp it.

It’s gone in an instant, leaving him feeling bereft, like when he woke up not minutes ago and dared to think. 

It is not a long time before his phone distracts him again, this time with the persistent _vzzzzz-vzzzzz_ of an incoming call.

Funny, that, of all the messages he remembers seeing, none of them were voicemail. And he still can’t look directly at the screen. Hurts too much.

He doesn’t say anything when he picks up, just listens.

It’s Elias. 

“Jon.”

It’s a statement, his name. Of a sort. With an acetic tang of resentment lurking bitter beneath Elias’s soothing baritone. Goading. Coaxing. Smug sans the usual gravitas of absolute conviction.

“We need to talk.”

Then, to pacify the cold demand, “Are you able to come in today? Only I know you’ve been busy these past few weeks. We haven’t seen you in some time.”

There’s the upward tick of a knowing smile there, and Jon shudders bodily, his skin suddenly crawling.

“Of course,” he lies. 

Not that there’s any untruth to it. He _is_ going to come in, is going to return to the Institute, just like always. Just there’s something off about it all, unsure and liable to careen into a meltdown at any moment. There’s something amiss in his processing of all of this. Lacking. ~~Lagging~~.

“Perfect,” says Elias, and hangs up, leaving Jon bewildered in a way he is… not as uncomfortable with as he might have thought. 

And, again… _perfect_.

Like Elias _knows_ , like everyone but him is in on some grand secret, snickering behind his back, playing his strings to the point of snapping.

“If that’s how it’s going to be,” Jon mutters, feeling vindicated at the sureness of his rising frustration, the culminating peak of anger, at the way he’s going to stalk into Elias’s office and let him have it. 

The bastard knew all along and left him for the Stranger, and that? That betrayal? The utter disregard for all Jon has sacrificed and endured at the hands of one Mister Bouchard? The disclarity of Michael has _nothing_ on that - is far less personal than _that_. 

Because the Institute, horrible though it may be, is his. Despite its mysteries and violence and all the awful, selfish people working to keep its gears slick with blood, it is still _his_ and is _not_ supposed to play him for such a pawn. He’ll do the grunt work, easily - _happily_ , even - but he will not be notched onto the mutilated scaffolding that keeps it standing. 

And he will _not_ let Elias do this to him. 

So he welcomes the cloud of anger that settles over him, obscuring the strangeness and helping him formulate a proper, achievable goal - that is: unless some miracle of divine justice intervenes, a swift and satisfying fist to Elias’s face. 

Yes, he thinks, that’s a very good start.

There is no accompanying migraine, and he welcomes its relief.

-

Except there’s no chair opposite Elias’s desk. 

There’s always a chair - that veneer of formality. Elias is hardly so blunt, even at the best of times, but even he has his constants. His love of scheduling, for one thing, and that uncomfortable oak chair he probably polishes before every anticipated meeting. And even unanticipated. Jon’s barged in more than a few times, and at each one, that chair was waiting.

Now, it is not. Now, it is just Elias at the edge of the desk, leaned against it, looking… breathless? In wild disarray, almost, though the only things out of place, really, are an errant few strands of hair fallen limp across his forehead and a slight, wrinkled asymmetry in the double windsor at his throat. Given he never allows anyone to see him even a thread out of place, these dishevelments belie something entirely else. 

Altogether, the sight of him knocks the wind clean of Jon’s furious sails, and he feels as discordantly small to Elias’s unscowering eyes. He’s so used to them gouging out every last scrap of his resolve that he’s almost left breathless, himself, as Elias seems to fail to even look directly at him. His gaze keeps sliding sideways, like it can’t quite zero in.

“Ah, good of you to come, Jon,” he says, and sounds like he’s picked up from the wrong place in a script Jon hasn’t been given his own lines to.

“You -” Jon starts, accusatory, but he’s still so tired that the vitriol is lost to a defeated exhale of, “ _You_ called me.”

Elias does not stare at him for a good, long while, unfocused, ice-pick eyes staring just over Jon’s head.

“Hm,” he laughs to himself at length. “Yes. So I did.”

Then he blinks, hard and harsh, and shakes his head, as though dislodging something. Indeed, he must have, because those eyes turn suspicious and stern, burrowing into Jon’s own, appraising whatever it is they find there.

“Yes,” he says, more succinctly. “So - I - _did_.”

“Elias, I -”

“Sit down, won’t you?” Elias interrupts, glowering. “We have much to discuss.”

There is still no chair.

There is, however, the floor, and for an uncanny second, Jon wavers, weighing his options. His decision feels distant, suggested without the necessary room for countermeasure, and he abruptly arcs forward, barely managing not to wince as his sore, unused knees - only just now re-acclimating themselves to not being bent for hours upon hours - crash harshly against the varnished wood. Of a more appropriate, familiar volition, he settles his hands in a nervous flutter on his thighs and rests back on his heels. 

The air between himself and Elias immediately changes, though for better or far, far worse, Jon can’t tell. The look on Elias’s face suggests a sick sort of placation, but the tension from eye to eye as Jon barely manages to look up and meet that pleased, purring grin screams to a fever pitch, rippling over Jon’s entire body, pulsing against his throat where Michael’s fingers made their play only a short while ago.

It’s Elias who disturbs the spell. Of course it is. He is not knelt, he does not suffer under implication. He _is_ , and he is nearing and nearing, till the toes of his brogues nudge against Jon’s knees and his hand reaches out to take Jon by the jaw. So he can’t look away, no matter the migraine that threatens to take root.

“You know I only want what is best for you, don’t you, Jon.”

Not a question. _Not_ a question.

Jon nods.

Elias nods with him, approving.

He continues, “And so you know that, in order for me to protect you, you must not lie to me.”

Jon shakes, but still nods. But he does not understand.

Elias shows no mercy, just offers the smooth pad of his thumb caressing against Jon’s cheek - down, inward, tracing him, as he talks.

“Transparency is our greatest asset, Jon, that invaluable ability to sift through every and any ruse we want in order to find the core of truth. Surely I need not remind you. Surely you remember.”

Does he? How long has it been since he’s taken a statement? How much did the Stranger deny from him? Has he really, ever, sussed a story in its entirety? Found the pulp of it? Or has he always just bent them to suit the horrors he could endure, the most palatable version of things. Jude, Crew, Nikola, all of the terrible things he’s encountered, have they ever truly revealed themselves? They were just snapshots, after all. Even his age in the wax museum was hardly a scratch to the surface of the Stranger’s centuries of skin and plastic.

He… shakes his head. No, Elias does not need to remind him. There’s nothing there to be reminded of, and that is not what Elias said. False positives. Double negatives. He needn’t answer what was not asked.

And it seems to satisfy Elias, the heavy press of his thumb halting its ministrations delicately against his lower lip, and the gaze that watches Jon turns soft. Fond, almost. 

“Good,” Elias murmurs. “Very good.”

And Jon sags with relief, that this unsettling meeting is nearly over, then he can go back to his office and properly break down, there. 

Oh, but then Elias is not letting go of his jaw, and there is cruelty again in his smile, in the way he next says, “And so you know not to hide things, Jon. From me, from what we _do_. This is all much too important for petty secrets, wouldn’t you agree?”

Jon gasps, suddenly blind with white, hot pain so absolute he barely feels Elias’s thumb slip between his lips and secure his mouth open.

_So you will tell me what happened, what influence the Spiral offered in exchange for your escape. You will tell me why you accepted it._

_I - I -_

~~_Can’̶t҉.̛ C͟a͜n. No͞t̡. ̡D̸o̕_ _n’͟t_ _kņo̸w͘. C͜a͏n’̴t ̸k͞now. Won͝’t ̶le͜t ͡-̢_~~

The next gasp is not his own, is too indignant, and just as sharp and searing as it arrived, the pain disappears, as does Elias’s thumb, his hand, his entire person as it was situated far too closely to Jon, reeling back.

“I… see,” Elias breathes, expression blankly stunned, though it’s hard to tell fully through the tears once more muddling up Jon’s eyes.

Then he’s back, Elias, as close as too close can be, his hands everywhere in Jon’s hair, petting and pulling, soothing and forcing Jon’s gaze again in equal, demanding measure.

“You poor thing,” he whispers, eyes nearly silver for how they flash and gleam with a distinct _hunger_. “But we can’t have this, I assure you, Jon, we cannot.

“And I’m going to help you,” he continues, and takes a wrenching fistful of Jon’s hair and hauls him to his feet, stifling the cry that arises from Jon’s broken throat with his other hand, bracing his palm over Jon’s mouth.

“And we’ll find out together, won’t we? We will find so very, many things.”

And Jon just… nods.

What else is there? To do, to know, to find, to expect? This is the Institute, after all, this is his _is_ , and if this is what is wanted of him, then it shall have. And it’s not like he knows anything, himself. Yes, he too wants to discover Michael’s plans, wants to make himself very much not a part of them. Yes.

_Y-yes._

Splitting, pulsing, painpainpain, and he blinks like he’s trying not to cry, but he’s already gone and done that, and they both know it. 

“Good,” says Elias anyway. 

His hands, however, remain in place, securing Jon there, against him, the floor, in the heart of the Institute, in the snare of a monster as unlike Michael, and so _exactly_ like Michael. And Jon is between them both. 

“And please don’t worry, Jon,” Elias soothes, his fingers digging into flesh that Jon is still not terribly convinced is his own. “I can help you, we’ll find this together. You _will_ remember, I promise.”

Nods. Just keeps nodding. Doesn’t ~~can’t~~ think about it. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what he’ll give Elias. In this awful, agonizing moment, he just wants it over with. He’ll do what he must. He’ll concede. 

“Good.”

Not perfect, and Jon’s chest pangs with a loss he never wants to broach, is more than happy to never understand. It still hurts, though; there is still that everywhere.

Then Elias lets him go, unburies his fingers from Jon’s body, his gaze from Jon’s swimming mind, and circles back around his desk, taking his seat with a flourish. In a similar display, Jon sees that, in fact, the other chair is there, now, that it has always been there and was just set off to the right, out of its usual place. This whole time, he could have sat, and only one of them knew it.

“You’re welcome to take the rest of the day off,” Elias says absently. “I know this is rather a lot to contend with after all the hard work you’ve put in this past month.”

Somewhere, Jon wants to scoff. But it isn’t here, isn’t in the presence of this other monster and his own particular brand of lies. 

And so he says, “No,” because that feels defiant, feels like a skewing of his own script.

Elias, now busy staring down a stack of spreadsheets, glances up with an arched eyebrow and a look of coy understanding on his face.

“Very well,” he says. “Do mind what you tell the others, though, won't you? I would hate for them to get distracted from their own work.”

Jon snorts this time, an honest, caustic sound. 

“They won’t,” he says bitterly, but it’s a welcome certainty. 

They won’t. They will _not_.

“Very well.” 

Elias does not look up from his work. The chair is no longer to the right of the desk. And no one will worry over Jonathan Sims.

So he turns, and he leaves, and he heads for his own office.

And eyes and eyes and eyes burrow into his shoulder blades, his spine, the gooseflesh on the back of his neck, as he departs. And he doesn’t know what they see.

And he doesn’t know if this is a good thing.

And he does not know.


	3. objectivate; instigate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the slow uploading! I have a proper end game for this, and I don't suppose we'll have terribly many chapters, but dw, it's gonna get suitably saucy soon ;>

_ Jon’s back _ . 

It’s muttered like a pandemic, a riddling echo, from the scant few mouths still lurking down in the archives. He doesn’t hear them, of course, but doesn’t have to, either. He bumps into Tim on the stairs, shares a stunned second of extremely tedious eye contact before they both stammer their flaky excuses, and gossip travels less than lightly around here, so by the time he’s shuffled dazedly to his office proper, the  _ eyes _ have taken up arms with the physical, his colleagues emerging from the woodwork to stare and whisper conspiratorially. But no one approaches. 

Well -

“ _ Jon _ ?!”

He winces, and must have done so noticeably, because Martin recoils just as quickly as he approaches, halting a substantial foot away as Jon freezes halfway over the threshold into his office. 

“Martin, I -”

There are… tears. Not his, and not Martin’s, and there are not even tears - not really - but there  _ are _ , all implacably suggested in the frangible distance between them. And there are tears, too. Of trust, understanding, disbelief. Rents ragged at the edges, soft as sheet metal and vicious where they snare. And there is no way to distinguish any of it.

“You didn’t know,” Jon whispers, and a perfect, distinct  _ hurt _ etches into the shadows beneath Martin’s eyes.

“What,” he says -  ~~ not ~~ a question ~~ ingly ~~ .

“Elias," Jon replies.

~~_Michael_~~ laughs his migraine, apropos of neither of them.

“I - what?”

A question, finally, and one Jon can answer.

“He didn’t tell you,” tells Jon, finding strength in the transparency. “That I was kidnapped?”

Another question from Martin, same as before, and half shouted with stunned disbelief, though perhaps not as shocked as it should be. He’s rather starting to make a reputation for himself, Jon is, amidst the other avatars and their ire. It was only a matter of time, really.

“No,” says Martin, when his eyes stop being so big and his hands stop pulling at his hair, mussing the curls that make Jon flinch with remembered giggles. 

“No he didn’t.”

“Right,” breathes Jon, and is disgusted to find it’s a sigh of relief.

But then he’s always loath to let anyone concern themselves with the likes of  _ him _ . Like Elias said, there’s no sense in such distractions, and he survived. By the grace of some graceless horror, yes, but survived nonetheless. Now it’s just a matter of picking through the glass shard pieces. Try not to bleed out, reconcile the sutures, et al (and all and  all and a̷l͜͏l͡)

“Jon…” 

And Martin’s looking at him, not through or between, just  _ at _ him, seeing him, the breaks and bruises, but not the confusion or betrayal. For now, Martin sees only skin deep, and it is such a goddamn relief.

And so Jon fails to regret his retreat as he steps back, fully, into his office. If this is all Martin sees, if he does not know the turmoil behind Jon’s eyes, then it will be easier for him to accept. Just his boss being weird and pathetic as always. That’s all. Nothing more.

“I’ll… I just need some time,” Jon says, as the hurt threatens panic at the corners of Martin’s mouth. 

“But -”

_ Whyareyouherewhatappenedwhotookyouwhywon’tyou- _

“I - I just can’t, Martin,” Jon stammers, fist tight around the doorknob, elbow aching to slam it shut. “N-not right now.”

“But wh-”

He doesn’t slam it, can’t bring himself to sever Martin’s concern so abruptly, but there is damage regardless, and Martin’s betrayal seeps under the door where the frame doesn’t sit quite flush with the floor, flails at him, beckons him to please  _ please _ just open it again, just one - more - time.

And he wants to, wants so badly  _ to _ , but what if it turns yellow? What if Martin no longer lies beyond it. What what what and only one  _ if _ between him and uncanny terror, and he can’t risk that, not right now. He just… needs to sit - at his desk, which is right over there, and  _ to _ there he carries himself, and, here-there, he collapses, in a wreck of silent heaves and sobs. 

Which turn to laughter that is not:  laughterhisowneven _ here _

“Go away,” he mutters through gritted teeth. 

It does not, although neither does it make itself wholly present, at least not in the ways Jon has grown accustomed to.

“Just checking in, Archivist,” it sing-songs between his ears. 

“Great. You’ve checked. Now  _ go _ .”

A hiss of static splits his snarl, and the space in his head where Michael’s voice grates and smirks suddenly shivers. Gooseflesh breaks out in the pit of Jon’s stomach.

“ _ Christ _ ,” he groans, and lowers his head from his hands to the desktop. 

“Mm, you might want to mind how you go about that,” Michael offers unhelpfully. “But far be it from me to let you in too soon, I’m keen to see how you… explore this, Archivist.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to do that?” Counters Jon. “You won’t tell me anything, Elias thinks I’m lying. I haven’t even had bloody time to think about the fact I was kidnapped!”

“There is time, now,” Michael says.

“And will you let me have it?” 

“Oh absolutely not, Archivist. We’ve been over this. Nots and nots and nots, that is all for you.”

“Fantastic.”

“Isn’t it?”

Said cheerily. Eerily. In Michael’s dis-cadence, though, they’re both one of the same and simultaneously the last two things that could  _ ever _ fit together. Much like himself and  _ it _ , like the Eye and the Spiral. Clarity and Obfuscate.

_ Sharp _ . 

He jolts, then groans, the sting too quickly dissipating into the dull beat of blood behind his eyes.

“Like I said,” Michael offers, almost growls if that word could exist in the moment. But it cannot.

And joints of toolittlemany settle around Jon’s shoulders, fingernails at the knuckles and tendons for cuticles, yet it’s more comforting an embrace than any he’s known this past month. And the voice that purrs beside his ear is static and clear, humming like the snap of a violin bow.

“Mind how you go.” 

And finally, Jon is given his space, though he hasn’t strength for any of it, least of all for relief. Or appreciation. In the confines of his office with its dull expectations of _Read_ and _Know_ and _Feed The Feaster, the_ _Beauty Beheld_ the unoccupancy provided feels cheap, stressed and buckling at the joints like it’s only just keeping everything from toppling again. And if he moves from his chair, reaches for a statement, accepts a cup of tea - hell, if he even thinks about crying again, all will collapse into a dark and ceaseless enmity and, this time, he won’t be so graciously torn out of it.

He… wants to follow that train of thought further, wants to examine why he keeps falling back on these curiously violent images (it’s Michael, obviously, but  _ why _ ) but then:

_ chk _

_ jrrrrrrrrrrr _

He actually gapes, mouth falling open comically were there any  _ other _ audience to observe and chuckle.

But this thing never does respond, just always eavesdrops.

_ Un-fucking-believable…  _

He can’t see it, but he needs to. Needs to find it. Needs to know why  _ why _ it wasn’t listening just now, seconds prior, why it didn’t hear the thing he heard. Why it wasn’t there when Nikola slathered him in thick, oily praises. Why it didn’t scream with him in Michael’s clutches. 

_ Whywhereneedyouhavetoknowhavetofindout- _

In a clumsy burst of sudden rage, he throws his arms across his desk top, sending papers flying and his keyboard crashing against the wall. He spares the monitor, if only because he can see just fine that it doesn’t obscure anything by its stand. The rest of his office, though, he sets about studiously tearing apart in pursuit of his loathsome little listener. Till the place is in carnage, with files disemboweled of their cursed stories and potting soil strewn in clumps like a funeral procession from where he’s thrashed at his overgrown and underwatered spider plant.

He turns, then, empty handed and ears ringing with the jittery knelling of that  _ goddamn traitor _ , turns wildly to face his desk once more.

And there, he finds his jacket. And there, his jacket is slung over a chair opposite his desk. It is, in fact, the chair that was supposed to be across from Elias’s desk, the chair that was then discovered to the right, and then was not, and now  _ is _ here and sporting his jacket. And in the jacket that  _ is _ his and  _ is _ sagging over the back of the chair that  _ is _ always across from Elias’s desk, something lurks inside the left pocket, weighing it down. 

As he reaches numbly for it - grabs it, lest the damn thing get away - he indistinctly recalls that he did not wear his jacket today. He’d stormed so incompletely from his flat, he’d neglected all but his keys. 

Another errant thought occurs that he has not  _ had _ a flat since the whole “on the run for murder” debacle, but just as demanding of attention is his firm grip around the taperecorder he finds cradled in a nest of pocket lint and old receipts, so everything else rather gets kicked to the wayside.

“You,” he hisses, glaring at the machine.

Well, he - he means to glare, at least. Really, he does. But it comes off more like squinting, like staring down oncoming high beams right before a collision. Instinct screams for him to jerk his head away, but he’s never been very good with that, so he keeps and keeps and keeps (holdingstaringpantingthroughthepain) until the recorder splutters - like it’s tripped over its own tape and busted a lip - and, after several, juddering wheezes of screeching reels, it dies completely, going silent in his clutch. Going blind.

He can look at it now, properly, without the squinting, and his hands, for whatever volition, decide to turn it over, and his nails agree to pluck and pick at the battery casement till his fingers finish the job and open it properly.

He almost laughs when he sees what’s inside, but that feels too… appropriate. Instead, he stares, blandly considering the contents before turning the recorder over and letting it dispel the incorrections so cruelly jammed into its guts.

They fall to the floor like scolded children: a shower of plastic novelty eyes, their loosened pupils wobbling and clicking and not in the least bit ashamed of themselves. Had they skin enough for eyelids, he’s certain they would be narrowed in amusement, but it’s a small mercy Michael spared him of that. And, as dread and pity and confusion churn up a finely distilled cocktail in his stomach, it’s one he’s infinitely grateful for. 

_ Ingratiate yourself to the goddamn Spiral for having courtesy enough not to fill it with real eyes. Jesus fucking christ, Sims… _

It’s a rapid fire thought, one that brings only a negligible twinge, and encourages him not to look away from the small pile of eyes clustering and dusting the floor by his feet. They pour out for some time, well beyond capacity of the comparatively meager casement, though neither does the pile at his feet grow any larger than a few centimeters. Eventually, he realizes they’re simply not going to stop flowing, so he dumbly re-affixes the battery panel, drops the recorder back into his jacket pocket (the left, he makes sure it’s the left) and then turns his back to both the jacket and the chair upon which it’s tossed.

When he turns around, some seconds later, the chair is  _ not _ and so is his jacket and its recorder along with it. Not gone, exactly, just not here. He wonders if it’s gone back to Elias, if it’s brought the infected recorder with it to show the bossman, to toy at him. He finds himself giggling at the image this supplants into his bruised mind’s eye: Elias glowering determinedly as his office fills and fills with a million, cutting, plastic  _ stares _ . 

And when he finds himself giggling, he stops just as quickly, even clamps a tight palm over his mouth. That seemed to work before. Elias seemed to think so. But what will he think of the eyes and their plastic?

Somehow, throughout this most odd and calming mania, he realizes he’s trying to cry again, so perches himself on his desk’s edge, gathers his face in his hands, and counts his breathing out. 

“Alright,” he says at length. “Okay. It’s okay - just… yeah.”

It’s easy to talk, blessedly so. 

Unlike the dialogue running amok in his head - careening about and causing all manner of  _ goddammit that hurts _ \- opining aloud seems to bear no consequence. Talk is cheap, right? Maybe all he needs is to throw himself right back into the flow - into the fray of the Archives. He hasn’t read a statement in ages, and that nags bitterly at his throat, so parched from muffled screams and groans and weeping. There are vastly more pressing concerns than ferreting out some decades old ghost story, but what else is there to accomplish in these utterly confounding moments? What crux is there beyond  _ Read, Know, Feed the Feaster the - _

“ _ Nnggg, _ ” he keels further into himself, bludgeoning pain whiting out his eyes-closed-and-dark vision. 

But opens them back up just as easily, without his consent, without his  _ want _ to.

_ Don’t don’t I do not - _

And there, at his feet, seen clear as bone through split skin, is another recorder. He knows it’s another - a different one - because it’s mockery is, too, more self sure and smarmy, like it  _ knows _ itself not to be full of plastic eyes. Indeed, as he numbly picks it up, turns it over, pries at the battery casement, it holds fast, his nails chipping and then, finally, tearing completely as the recorder refuses to indulge.

_ Can’t watch back the Watcher. _

A tickle of laughter wiggles up his throat and sends him into a coughing fit. No  _ sharp _ , though. That’s good. Or. Maybe not. Or… or? 

Christ… if he could just have one minute of peace - one,  _ fucking _ second to collect himself…

But the recorder jeers back at him, privy to things he can’t think about, cajoling him into figuring it out and offering nothing but itself for evidence.

Oh.

_ Oh _ .

_ Sharp _ , but not as severely. Tolerable, and he staggers back to his desk, leans against it, till his legs come to a consensus of giving way and he crumples to the floor, knees disgracefully askance. Not like before. Not supplicant for Elias. Not bent for eons in the museum. Not prone for Michael. This, simply, is him, his own display of helplessness, his own  _ self _ . And there is the recorder. And there is him. 

And there are his fingers, tightly cinched around the metal and plastic, like a noose. And there is the press and fumble of buttons, the  _ chk _ and  _ jrr _ , and then, merely, the expectation, that familiar cajoling, though where once it slid like silk up his throat, it now slicks oily and bitter. But it’s compelled all the same, despite its rottenness. So he begins:

_ “ _ Statement of Jonathan Sims, regarding his…  _ thoughts _ on the entity, Michael; his superior, Elias Bouchard, and their involvement and inaction with his kidnapping. Statement taken direct from subject. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.”

A distended sigh soils the better part of the next ten odd seconds, such that he half considers starting over, getting it  _ right _ . He used to be such a stickler for routine, now he’s glad for anything that could satiate this,  _ any _ of this, but especially the gnawing emptiness thick through to his very marrow. Bereft. What is he  _ missing _ … 

The sibilance brings him back, shocks the room back into his vision - the weight of his tongue into his mouth as he realizes he’s talking, has said as much aloud. And he says it again.

“What am I missing.”

Not a question.

Not a statement, either.

Not not not  _ not not not _

_ Not missing anything _ .

_ Sharp _ , but it’s not supplied by his own mind, his own meek physicality. It’s the laugh again, and it’s coming from the recorder.

Had he the energy to scream, he would. Instead, he barely succeeds in throwing the damn machine across the room - arcing laughter and all - and what luck that it hits  _ just _ right against the button panel. 

_ Chk _ , and no more  _ jrr _ . Blind again. No feasting, not even a morsel.

He pulls the knees that are still his to a chest that does not feel present what for the hollowness suffusing every rib and sinew. But it’ll have to do, have to be enough, and so it is, as he rocks himself gently, face pressed to the fabric of his jeans, dampening it. 

_ Jon _ … 

_ Not not not not not _

_ ‘Jon’ _

_ not not not _

_ “Jon.” _

_ No- _

“Jon!”

He does scream this time, as a hand grasps his shoulder, but it’s too warm, and perfectly sized, with the history of many cups of tea etched into the curve of the palm.

“ _ Christ _ ,” Martin breathes, his other hand pressed to his own chest as Jon looks tearily up at him. 

He’s crouched down, and half fallen back, Martin is, but it seems he’s steadied himself with the hand on Jon’s shoulder, his grip firm, unyielding.  _ There _ . Promising nothing of  _ plastic  _ and  _ peel _ . Or things that are not. No fingers impossible of length and intent. 

“I - I’m sorry,” is all Jon can say, and a shadow passes over Martin’s expression, an amalgam of a month’s worth of emotions all pent up and begging to be let loose, but Martin - ever resilient Martin - shakes his head, and they’re gone.

Still, Jon couldn’t help noticing the indistinct silhouette of anger lurking beneath the many layers of worry and despair. But it’s not there anymore. He can’t concern himself over it.

What he can fret about, however, is Martin. Martin here, in his office. Martin seeing the office and what Jon’s done to it. Martin seeing  _ him _ . No no no, it’s bad and wrong and not - not -

On the floor, anymore. He’s not. On the floor. Or, rather, he is? But he’s half hoisted into Martin’s lap, smothered all around by the comforting steadfastness of his arms, and the drum of his heart where Jon’s face is cradled against his chest. 

“Martin, I -”

“M’so sorry,” Martin sniffles, shutting Jon’s awkward repy right the hell up. “We - we had no idea.”

_ How could you, _ thinks Jon, but as the bloom of  _ sharp _ threatens to rise, the rush of resentment for Elias floods it out completely. Martin shouldn’t be blaming himself like this, shouldn’t be babying him for his own stupidity, for Elias’s neglect. There is so much goddamn blame, but none of it is Martin’s.

He wants to say as much, wants to reassure him, but his throat’s gone to tight dust again, so all he can accomplish is a stifled whimper which, well, if that’s how it’s going to be, then why not cling to Martin, as well? Why not relish the warmth, the certainty of him. 

Eventually, his ears stop ringing, and the aching curve of his spine is just that, just a simple, awful discomfort unburdened by the weight of prying things searching out answers he just doesn’t - fucking -  _ have _ . So he squirms, a bit, reminded too suddenly of binding ropes and restrictive chairs..

Martin immediately stiffens, but Jon quickly says, “No no, it’s okay,” and squeezes his wrist - which he’s taken lax hold of it, apparently, though he can’t remember exactly when. 

“Just… just need to move.”

“Oh,” breathes Martin, his relief palpable, and he lets Jon wriggle away, not too far, but it puts enough space between them for Jon to sit up properly again. Cross-legged, now, reminiscent of the way he used to lounge on the sofa as a kid, devouring books and nibbling stale biscuits. It feels… right. Feels okay.

The way Martin watches him, though, is anything but, his scrutiny poorly concealed, his concern even more so. 

“It was Nikola,” Jon says, sparing them both of the agony of skirting this issue any longer. “I - the Stranger… they wanted to make me part of their dance.”

He’s not entirely sure how detailed he wants to make his account to Martin. Hell, he couldn’t even get the words out himself for his own pathetic statement, but Martin’s not dumb, far from it, and they’ve been on the Stranger’s trail for months now. He can easily infer, and if the full body shudder and wide eyed panic that mars over the facade of calm is any indication, he doesn’t need anything more than that.

So Jon nods, swallows hard, and presses on. 

“And - and I got away, obviously, but…” here he pauses to pull a deep sigh, as though he’s not breathed properly in ages.

“There were…  _ complications _ ,” he finally says, rubbing at his left eye and the twinge shooting sparks into its periphery. 

“Take your time,” is all Martin offers, though Jon knows as much he’s doing as admirable a job of restraining himself from demanding every explication as he is  _ not _ going up to Elias’s office and kicking his teeth in.

“I had help,” 

“Elias?” Martin scoffs, disbelieving, and Jon puts that to rest easily with a slow shake of the head.

“...Tim?” Martin offers next, too quickly for Jon to curl his tongue around the two, tacky syllables and the infinite laughter that accompanies them. 

This, though, this prompts a genuine laugh of Jon’s own, sharp and perhaps a little too cruel, and it’s Martin’s turn to sigh.

“I thought because - because of the museum we’ve been following up on,” he hurries to explain. 

“I think he’d have been happier to leave me there, himself,” Jon replies, vying for a joke, but it delivers all wrong, and the meager thread of levity, of - of normalcy? even? snaps entirely, and Jon, scrounging up the last dregs of his resolve, grimaces, “I wish it had been him. Or you. Or - or anyone - any _ thing _ \- else.”

“Jon -”

“It was Michael.”

The  _ sharp _ turns to a warning  _ burn _ , but he soldiers on, unable to halt the torrent of words flowing from his mouth like vinegar. Like honeyed strychnine. 

“ _ Michael _ saved me, and I have no idea why. Nor does Elias, and - and it won’t leave me  _ alone _ , Martin, it wants something from me, a - a debt, for whatever it did to save me, but how can I honor something I don’t know? It won’t tell me, and I keep hearing its  _ laugh _ , but it’s different and - and  _ in _ my head, and I woke up today in my flat, Martin. I don’t  _ have _ a flat, anymore. And you left so many messages, and I only cared to respond to  _ fucking Elias _ , because I th-thought he’d have answers, but he’s just - and then there was - but I -”

_ Spiralling aren’t we, Archivist? _

“Shut  _ up _ !” Jon shouts, growls, gnashes so viciously, that by the time he’s regained enough sense to see past his panic, it’s to the image of Martin backed away, fallen onto his hands, face stricken with very real fear. 

“Oh christ,” Jon makes to reach over, then thinks better of it as Martin flinches, and folds his hands tight against his chest, as much to stay them from straying as to maybe assuage the hurt building in his empty chest. 

“I’m so sorry. Martin, I’m - I’m, I didn’t mean, it just - was in my head again, it wasn’t you I  _ swear _ .”

“Jon,” Martin stares at him, eyes as firm and unwavering as his tone. Not mean, not upset, but there,  _ there _ , a handhold. 

“It’s okay. 

“I - I mean it’s  _ not _ , obviously,” Martin continues, sounding more appropriately uneasy. “I mean.. jesus christ, yeah this is… not good, but - but  _ I’m  _ here, and - and I’m here for you. I know - I know these past months have been - and now - but… but I’m here, and I can help you. 

“If you’ll let me.”

This he punctuates with a sad, soft sigh, and something barbed and suspicious uncoils within Jon. It’s a long way off, though, whatever solution there is, so he merely nods, swallows hard on the stricture in his throat, and waits for Martin to make the next move. Which is, evidently, to thrust himself back into the fray of Jon’s unpredictable vicinity, Martin scooting himself over on his knees, and offering a hand.

“I don’t think it’s safe here,” he says, so blunt that the logic almost stuns Jon. “For you. If - if Michael’s after you, or something, well we know it’s got a lot more experience with this place.”

Jon hadn’t even considered that. The Spiral can writhe its way into any spot it so pleases, but he’d stupidly assumed the Institute was some sort of… neutral ground, his various encounters with the entity, already, notwithstanding. This place is supposed to be his  _ is _ , but Martin’s right. But -

“But I can’t stay away,” he whispers, more to himself, but Martin’s too keen not to hear it.

“You know that,” Jon continues. “There’s no escaping this.”

“Call it sick leave, then,” Martin says, a wan smile warring with his frown. “You don’t have to be here, Jon. Not right now, anyway.”

It makes sense, perfectly so, but Jon never would have come to such a conclusion, himself. Not to mention the fact he does  _ not _ have a flat to go back to -  _ should _ not, at least. 

“Will you -” he can’t meet Martin’s gaze, and he picks his words carefully. “Can you come with me? To my place, to - to make sure it’s safe.”

He looks up, and his eyes do not waver, do not refuse to focus; they hold fast to the image of Martin sagging with relief, running a hand through his hair.

“Thought you’d put up a fight about that,” he admits. “Yeah. Course I will, Jon. Just -”

He pauses, brow pinching.

“Will you be alright? For a minute?” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I ah, had the kettle on. Was coming to ask if you wanted tea, actually. Kind of worried it’s going to burn.”

Jon laughs, and the amusement is his own, no one else’s. It’s so terribly a Martin thing to worry over.

“Go on,” he says, genuinely blithe for the first time in ages. “I’ll just… sort my things.”

“Won’t be a mo’,” Martin assures. “Just… it’s nothing, seriously, just don’t want to parade you like this through the archives anymore than we’ve got to. Everyone’s talking. Tim… well let’s just say he’s not angry enough to spare you from gossip.”

Jon scoffs, and Martin looks suitably sheepish.

“See to your tea, Martin,” Jon says, more kindly. “I’ll be fine.”

Martin smiles, a half tug of his mouth, and groans to his feet. 

“Back real soon,” he wavers toward the door. “Have your stuff ready, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” Jon replies easily.

In the wake of Martin’s departure, he feels… unalone. Not solved - nothing is solved - and certainly not hopeful, but… grounded. Stationary. 

Till his eyes fall on the thing, also grounded, also stationary, and particularly lurking in the corner of the room where it had landed so unceremoniously. The tape recorder sits, battered and leering, and what is he to do? Not retrieve it? Not obey its siren shriek? As if puppeted, he staggers over to it, bends at knees that no longer feel like his own, and it’s all he can do not to heave the hollowness from his sternum as his hand curls round the vile thing and finds the plastic and metal dampened: slick and wet with something that just cannot be water.

It’s tears, of course. 

The recorder is crying - sobbing, in fact. 

Because he is too, the both of them silent and sick with utterly harrowing despair, tape and teeth alike clenched in a grimace of anguish. Though one has fingers, and the other has things for being pressed, and so Jon’s trembling hands cajole the weeping machine into eviscerating itself, revealing not what Jon spoke half coherently into it minutes ago, but instead: laughter. 

The recorder is giggling. 

_ Howling _ , in fact. 

Because he is, too. 

The both of them. 

All of them. 

Shrieking and spluttering, together while Martin fetches tea. Or saves tea. Or… something. 

_ Something something not nothing. _

_ Not. _

_ Nothing. _

_ N-no  _

_ shriek  _

_ sharp  _

Weak and meek, respectively, and though, ultimately, it could all just be considered the same, Jon clings to the certainty of  _ something _ : amiss, construed,  _ different _ , in a way Elias hadn’t achieved, in a way Michael is not. 

The recorder is not there when he finds his faculties, nor when Martin finds him, placid as a storm ravaged sea, the facade of glass with ships dashed to splinters beneath the surface. The recorder was not  _ ever _ there. But the laugh was - clanging out, rippling into places it can’t be and so  _ will _ be. And his hands are still damp, slick with sorrow he cannot rectify. 

Thank fucking god then, he thinks - and isn’t it  _ just _ he’s denied the acrid  _ sharp _ as he does so - that Martin doesn’t offer his own hand for support. Doesn’t cross those boundaries now that Jon’s supposedly got his head screwed back on. Well, it’s no matter, he supposes. If a breakdown is what it takes for some decent consolation, then he suspects he’ll be weathering his torments in the safety of Martin’s embrace very soon. After all, there’s no telling what lurks in the flat that isn’t his. Michael saw fit to discard him there, took its merriments in his dizzying disillusionments. 

He thinks Martin will be a deterrent, though; Michael didn’t exactly flaunt itself to Elias and doesn’t seem eager to reveal itself to anyone but him. It’s… it’s a start, Martin is, Martin’s help, Martin’s hand on his shoulder, again, still not misshapen and still so kind.

Tentatively, then - carefully - Jon hopes.

He hopes that Martin will be enough.


	4. invariable; inviolable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So i'm trying Desperately to avoid doing that thing I do where I take 18 million chapters to get past one day of events, the pacing will pick up properly, now, just had to set.... 16k words of expo ig dfkjfdkf
> 
> (also mild cw in end notes)

Sans ceremony, they arrive at the flat that is not _shouldnotcannotbe_ his. It’s a simple procedure, really, Jon huddling close to Martin in the belly of the tunnels, their route of egress chosen to avoid prying inquests from archival staff as well as any objections Elias might pose to Jon’s leaving. 

Then, it’s a matter of emerging into a street Jon doesn’t recognize but that Martin does. 

Then the Tube. 

Then, still, it’s staying close to Martin, shivering despite the weather, and wishing for the jacket that was not and is not and never had a recorder dripping from its pocket in the likeness of some Dali-esque nightmare. 

Finally, it’s Jon realizing he must not have grabbed his keys after all, but, oh, it’s fine, because the door is not locked. 

Just as well, it is not yellow, but Jon insists Martin open it, anyway. Just in case. Things are much too… tetchy for him, anymore. He doesn’t trust himself not to inspire some yawning convolusion of mirrors and tasteless carpeting beyond his own threshold.

It works, but not quite in the way that would result if there were a direct antithesis, if there really were the chance of Michael’s laughing maw swallowing him whole and creaking shut after. Because the flat the door reveals is not his. And it is. And he cannot prove it.

He thinks several things in the seconds it takes for them to enter into the flat that isn’tis his and bolt the door behind them - several things he’s _allowed_ to think without too much pain. 

First, he tries that adage about copies: replacing everything with an exact replica of itself. But much in the same way Elias’s chair and his own jacket and the recorder were not, so too is everything of the flat. Too not to not be itself, and not even _remotely_ another likeness of itself.

So he tries his hand at “ _everything but shifted to the left_ ” but that’s wrong, too, because everything _is_ left, embodying a doubt he cannot find countermeasure to and so cannot point to and say “that used to be there, and now it is not.”

It is not, and always was not, and never was or will be or _is_ not. 

This threatens to send him reeling again, so he forces his mind to settle on “this is a flat” while Martin hurriedly checks every room for signs of inanity and giggles and smiles.

And though the flat is not replicated or jarred of its original positions, all of it is still left for Jon, like a gift - a gag - a cinctured throat struggling to wheeze its dying breaths. But doesn’t it have such lovely things to say? If, of course, that throat were not a throat, but merely a delusion of one, instead.

And he realizes, oh, so that’s how it works; that’s how the Spiral draws its fractals in the sand between itself and the Stranger. It is impossibility sans culpability, while the Stranger relishes its uncannyisms. They are a symptom of the Stranger. But for the Spiral, they are just another _is_ . It’s only _is_ , now that Jon thinks about it, but his eye starts up burning, so he doesn’t think about it anymore, too tired to suss that trainwreck of thought much further than the proverbial cliff’s edge.

“All clear,” says Martin, emerging from the - bedroom? 

Yes, as Jon steps cautiously further into the flat, he glimpses the familiar tidiness of navy blue hospital corners. Behind his eyelids wriggle shadowed recollections - phantom bursts of Michael pinning him down there, grinning and gloating for reasons inexplicable.

He’d detailed as much as he could _those_ particular specifics to Martin on the journey home, but nothing in Martin’s expression now indicates he’s gleaned much more from his cursory observations. 

Besides, Martin had assured Jon they’d do as little as possible to provoke Michael here again. Wouldn’t let Jon devolve into sobs and shivers. Would only regard Michael with clinical precision. 

Would would would would _would_ , but in the thick of it, in the lax palm lurking with yet unsprung claws, retrospect rather pales at the present’s sneer. Every draft that fails to stir the cobwebs, each drip of the tap in the kitchen that has never had a meal - it’s a portend, a held exhale waiting to scream, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

But Martin refuses to quail. Putting on his best face, his best wariness - because Jon’s not stupid, and patronizing him will do nothing - he supplants a solidity in the isn’tis amalgam of the flat’s facade. Where Martin is, it just _is_ , and that Jon can contend with.

“Tea.”

Not a question. Not a formality, either, but a familiarity. Rote and succinct. Jon nods, the weight of his world pounding behind his skull. 

Martin’s approach is calculated yet still casual enough to be him, to _be_ , and he carefully ushers Jon from the foyer, through the living room that has never bled, and to the leaking tap in the kitchen, parched on its own misery. Somewhere, Martin procures a kettle Jon’s never seen before - red with what could be rust if it really put the effort in - and fills it. 

Sets it to heat on the hob - was it always electric? 

Clatters about finding mugs and sugar and milk and a half finished packet of chocolate Digestives. These, Jon recognizes - from so many late nights fueled on half nibbled junk food and lukewarm, under-sweetened cups of tea - and his stomach lurches hungrily. The stained, off-white porcelain of the mugs, the stale biscuits Martin pushes his way, the steaming waft of bergamot, it’s a balm to his frazzled nerves, and he could melt as Martin guides him to a set of counter-side stools he couldn’t care less about not remembering. 

He perches on one as Martin quiets the now whimpering kettle and immediately submerges two biscuits in his cup as soon as it’s pushed his way. Hell, he’s halfway to something that could roughly be called contentment, till Martin fixes a cautious smile and asks, ever so modestly:

“What do you want to talk about?”

It’s small talk. That’s the point of this. Bit by shattered bit, he’s to find the common thread of his scraps and suture a solution with Martin’s help. But as ever, he’s gone and woefully underestimated his stake in this, what _other_ motivations and puppeteers have in mind for him.

So, instead - as is the wont of his bastard patron - he’s set to a razor’s edge of suspicion. Not at Martin, not even _about_ Martin. Just, he doesn’t like having questions turned on him. It feels wrong, like it might expose something that shouldn’t be.

So he turns it back on Martin.

“What do you want to know?”

The tip of his tongue shudders between his teeth, and Martin follows suit, gooseflesh rising all up and down his forearms. Martin immediately tucks them about himself and glares. Not cruelly, ~~not at Jon~~ , but it successfully cows the thing in Jon rising to its own bait, yanks it fully out of reach, and Jon blinks back to himself, struck suddenly with a deep embarrassment at himself. 

“I - I’m so sorry.”

He wants to reach for Martin - but he’s got a good enough hold of himself; he doesn’t need Jon.

“S’okay,” Martin says, still eyeing him warily. 

The fragrant steam of their tea billows into the blank space where Jon can’t traverse his gaze, can’t bring himself to look for fear of what he might force out.

“I - I just think it would be good,” he says, carefully, “to talk about… more objective things, what I can be certain of.”

_It’s the only way I can think to ward it off_ , he does not offer aloud, and the _sharp_ in his skull feels mocking, somehow.

He hides the wince well enough, but Martin provides no comment. In his chest, Jon’s heart heaves and stutters with a now-too-familiar ache, and he balls his hands to fists in his lap, carves his nails against his flesh to ground the swelling tide of panic - the thought that this is all it takes to turn even Martin against him. That everything truly is so fragile, so inevitable - 

“I didn’t want this to happen,” Jon says hoarsely, almost unheard. “I didn’t mean to make you a part of this,”

“And you didn’t,” comes the reply, so immediate Jon almost can’t believe it.

But nothing lies in Martin’s eyes when Jon manages to meet them. And nothing but tired concern flitters there, forgiveness settling into Martin’s intrepid smile lines, like a broken bird alighting on a wounded branch.

“I chose - _choose_ to help you,” Martin presses, as does he return the soothing pressure of his palm to Jon’s knee. “But this won’t be easy.”

He nudges Jon’s mug across the table top, which Jon notices is scarred over by many a stain, brown and ringed, evidence of previous mugs. None show such streaks as the ones this leaves, and that reassures him, affirms the gravity of this present, its solidity.

“I want now to be okay,” Martin is saying, once more snaring the thread of Jon’s tumultuous thoughts. “ And - but if I’d let you do… _that_ , I think it would have invited a whole other world of trouble.”

“Elias, you mean?” Jon hedges. Michael isn’t the only invading presence in this, after all.

Nodding, Martin squeezes Jon’s knee.

“You said he knew.”

“Inasmuch as Michael allowed,” Jon clarifies. 

It wouldn’t be quite fair of him to shirk every ounce of blame when Michael quite literally seems to have obscured _whatever_ transpired in the museum. 

“Well, he’s still a bastard,” Martin mutters, and Jon hides his snort into a small sip of tea.

It’s perfect, as always.

“Can’t argue, there.”

“But you still want to go back?” 

Martin’s gathered up his own tea, but makes no motion to actually drink. It inspires a sudden sadness in Jon, the terrible thought of it going cold, Martin - as ever - sacrificing even the most menial comforts for someone else’s.

“I think I have to,” he says quietly, though he’d like nothing more than to reach over and push Martin’s mug to his mouth, wash down that tight frown. 

“I mean - in the most obvious sense, I can’t leave, of course.”

“Of course,” Martin echoes, bitterly.

“But there are more answers there than I’ll find anywhere else,” Jon insists, invigorated by his conviction. “We still have to keep an eye on the Stranger, its ritual, but - but there has to be _something_ I can dig up about Michael. I - I heard him - the real Michael - on a tape. With Gertrude. It - _he_ \- used to be her assistant, and I -”

“What?”

Jon starts as Martin slams his mug onto the table, its contents juddering over the rim and dribbling down the sides. Immediately, he regrets sharing that morsel. He’d not thought about it properly, and hadn’t even felt the warning _sharp_ that accompanied it, but it’s blooming full and poisonous, now, a night shade unfurling of stepped-too-far-over-the-line-with-that-one-Archivist.

“I - it’s - it’s - I can get the tape,” he says, floundering stupidly.

“Does Elias know about this?” Martin’s face is frantic again; it hurts to look at.

Honestly, helplessly, Jon… shrugs.

“I don’t know.”

“Did _Gertrude_?”

“No no, Martin, it wasn’t - wasn’t like that. It - _he_ didn’t sound the same. I - I don’t think it was the same thing, the same entity.”

He grits his teeth against a building groan, tendrils of agony squirming behind his eyes, and it’s impossible to keep looking at Martin, but he catches the distinct deflating of Martin’s shoulders before his gaze slides off into periphery again. 

“So he, the real Michael, became an avatar then.”

“M-maybe,” Jon manages. 

“But I - I think we better stop.”

“What?”

“Talking about this.”

“Is - Jon is it back? Is it hurting you?”

_A-A-Archivi-i-ist_ , sings inaudible laughter, and Jon freezes, eyes blowing wide, not seeing anything or looking anywhere, but then there are hands cupping his face, hands that _are_ hands, spiting the ripples in his head. Martin has seen and will not look away, will not leave him to this fate. 

“Don’t say anything,” Martin instructs. “Don’t even think.” 

_Oh he’s very cute, isn’t he, Archivist? I must say I rather like this addition, a new pawn to play with._

“Don’t you dare,” Jon whispers, voice gone to gravel and rust as his head fills with mirthful shrieks. 

“Jon.”

_Yes, Jon, let’s not leave your little acolyte hanging._

_Not yet, anyway_.

And it’s gone. Of course. Always. _Not not not_ , and Martin’s staring through tears, or maybe he is. No, wait, they both are. How lovely. How poetic.

“It was here,” Jon confirms, saving Martin the strain of speaking. 

Then, “I think you better go.”

At this, Martin laughs, a bark of surprise and disbelief.

“You’re kidding. Jon, there’s no _way_ I’m -”

He yelps as Jon grabs him fiercely by the shoulders and forces his eyes to focus, to _see_ Martin.

“Go and find that tape,” he pleads. “It’s the last one I recorded. Listen to it and - and - I’ll call, I’ll keep tabs, I promise, but you _have_ to go. It doesn’t want you here, and I don’t want it to hurt you. I’ll be fine, I can keep it at bay, but please, _please_ you have to go, Martin, _please_.”

Martin hesitates. Too long and too much room for error, for giggles and fractals and _not not not_.

He’ll regret this later, much later, when he can find coherence enough for such a thing, probably curled up sobbing in a corner, but for now, it’s all he has, the only way he can convince Martin.

So he gathers himself, the voracious hunger in himself, that awful _compulsion_ , and says, “ _Go_.”

Martin blinks, but his pupils obediently glaze over, and that and the risen hair on his forearms tells Jon he’s succeeded, that he’s effectively betrayed his only friend, his only ally in this, and that this is the _only_ way to ensure Martin’s safety in this wretched, spiralling moment.

“I promise I’ll call,” Jon whispers as he helps Martin stand, leads him to the door that is cloyingly chartreuse, but Michael’s haunt is more of a tasteless mustard brown, so he trusts the hallway it opens into.

“Just go back to the Institute, Martin. Don’t talk to Elias if you can help it. Don’t tell anyone what’s happening. Just try and find that tape, and call me when you’ve listened to it. We’ll work from there, okay?”

His teeth tremble with static, as does Martin with the words it wrenches out of him, but he concedes nonetheless, mumbles something along the lines of “Okay, Jon, see you later.” then at last exits into the hall.

“ _Very_ interesting, Archivist!” Comes a barrage of peeling accolades, a thousand spiny knuckles tapping up the backs of Jon's legs not a second after he’s closed the door. “I had no idea you could be so _persuasive_.”

He falls, of course, crumples back to his knees in that terrible, aching splay of limbs only Michael seems capable of sending him to. And there’s the bastard, itself, constructed into a pantomime of domesticity by the tea-stained counter, half of it situated in an overstuffed, was-not-there loveseat, the other bits and bobs of its lewd corporeality examining the mugs. The rage that builds in Jon’s chest as it dips its fingers into Martin’s untouched drink almost gives him strength enough to stand, to shout, to _anything_ but _not_. 

But, well… _almost._

“Bit invasive if you ask me, though,” it presses on. “On both our accounts, actually. I’m really not keen to share just yet, and I thought you were past the errand boy antics with him?”

“Get out,” says Jon. Tries Jon. _Begs_ Jon, but the compulsion is gone, fizzled and sputtering, and Michael’s grin grows only ever wider.

“At this point? I’m afraid that’s impossible, Archivist.”

It’s still got its fingers dipped and twisting in Martin’s tea, and Jon’s own clench to meek fists though he remains staunchly sprawled on the floor. The door against his shoulder blades holds him fast, keeps him from all but laying prone, and he could so easily open it, could call for Martin, could save himself from this. But the wood judders, and Michael sneers, and he needn’t turn to see the door is not chartreuse anymore.

“Do you even know,” says Michael, extricating itself from the not-a-loveseat in a nauseating display of too-many-joints-at-not-enough-angles, “how deep I am inside of you? Do you know how much _deeper_ I can _be_?”

Jon whimpers as it approaches, pales as it looms over him. 

“We’ve barely started, and you’ve accepted so much already,” it continues, pressing its fingers into his scalp in the likeness of a caress if such care were the offspring of piano wire and a buzzsaw. 

It makes Jon’s teeth shiver in their sockets, and Michael beams at him.

“Very good,” it purrs, “but I want to taste your limits. And I want to break them. And - now this is key, Archivist -”

And here it leans down, taking far too long to do so, but still too soon for Jon’s endurance, and it murmurs its mouth beside Jon’s waiting ear, “I want you to let me.”

“Never,” Jon spits, the word bloodied between his teeth from the grinding effort it takes to keep his molars in place. 

Michael shouts its giggles.

“A limitless refusal, Archivist! It will do you no good.”

Its fingers turn appropriately cruel, and Jon knows there will be blood and hair to clean later, bits of him gouged out by those inexorable claws, but he holds his ground, finds it easier, somehow, since he’s sat there, anyway. 

“You know,” observes Michael, when it’s had its fun of yanking his head back and forcing his gaze, “you’re not as clever as you think. Have you forgotten that I am _always_ the antithesis?

“I could have you,” it continues nonchalantly, assuming a more dignified corporation, wearing the face of the man Sasha knew, the face Jon knows must accompany that apparition on the tape with Gertrude. 

“And I could not,” it counters, amused. “And it would all be the same. Really, it’s just a preference. Consenting to madness is _far_ more satisfying for me, after all.”

Jon scoffs, only to promptly regret doing so as Michael’s face sloughs back to indiscernibility, mirth echoing through a mouth that is not there.

“Why do you think I don’t simply throw people through my doors? Do you know how _delicious_ their hands feel at that inevitable grip? The tremors and nausea, the resignation, the _finality_ in the face of the infinite? 

“Would you like to know, Archivist -” it teases another caress down Jon’s pounding temple, “because _I_ happen to know that your master has not fed you yet.”

The tortured, empty chasm in Jon’s mind, the one that aches to be filled with knowledge that is not his, that should _not_ be but is _made_ his because it is his right to take it, to taste it, to savor the _is_ of so many, myriad fears… it is helpless to such goading, and so starved as to encourage his tongue halfway round “ _god yes, please, tell me_ ” before he catches himself and bites down, tasting copper, instead.

Michael, for its part, simply smirks.

“You’re too good for me, Archivist,” it says. “Such delicate defiance, such a _treat_ for the palate.”

The flick of tongue it inflicts across its mouth is not wholly as disturbing as Jon would care to admit, and he trembles, eyes locked on his tormentor, pupils contrite, scleras gleaning _nothing_.

“But that’s for later, I suppose,” Michael’s predatory leer vanishes with a sigh, replaced by a wistful melancholy that plucks the ache in Jon’s ribs like an ill-tuned harp, a clangorous unmelody. 

“You will want this,” it promises, ignoring the protesting shriek Jon gives as it abruptly hauls him to his feet _not_ by the roots of his hair. “I will ensure that, but we’ll need the _others_ to test your resolve, to truly help you see your way to me. I started what I could, and now it is your responsibility to wend the result.”

It laughs again (again again again) a note of contemplation suspended amidst its amusement. 

“Have you ever traversed a fractal, Archivist?” It asks, and Jon realizes that, although it seems to be dragging him from the front door, through the living room, it’s taking far longer to actually get anywhere, as though the floor plan has forgotten how to function within a Euclidean sensibility. 

“Have you ever worshiped those ceaseless spires,” Michael continues asking. “Have you agonized into its infinitudes?”

Jon, whimpering, only just manages to hold back a flood of curses and cries as Michael at last lets go, sending him staggering forward, free of its grasp. 

But he isn’t, of course not (not not not not not not). He’s back in the bedroom - _they_ are - and he has but a second to steady himself against the edge of his mattress - with its neat hospital corners and faint, tangy mildew scent - before dozens of hands return to his skin, his joints, knocking out the backs of his knees, throwing him onto the bed, proper, seeking out his wrists, his shins, the desperate arch of his back as he tries to writhe away. 

Above him - against, along, among, around, _at_ , a mantra Jon recalls from primary school, something about prepositions, how you can’t end a sentence with them - there is Michael, wrong and incomplete and ceaseless, an itch against his irises, sand in the already cracked lens sending the final image to a spray of ten thousand in-identical iterations. Plastic and swirling and _fake_. 

_Do you want to_.

It’s pushed out of him, the word, the _scream_ , a masticated plea such that it’s only a roar in his ears, seafoam static and white, blinding hot noise. 

Michael. Above. Around. Wrong so _wrong_ . ~~_It can’t end like this_~~. Smiles. Leans down. Puts its mouth to his. _Grins_.

Then is gone.

Jon lies still for some time, and when he moves - turns his head - beside him, nestled into the pillow, sits a tape recorder, its reels quietly turning, its lungs softly wheezing. Whatever he said, it certainly heard. Whatever uttered of his throat sans his consent, whatever earned him such vile affections, whatever sprung the tears thick and hot and swimming again, it has been heard and cataloged. 

But he doesn’t want to hear it back. He doesn’t want to know. 

He turns to the other side, his body a mangling of sore bruises and impregnable tension sleep can’t hope to remedy. Behind him, a click issues into the stillborn air (around around around). And for a while, there is no more breathing save his own.

-

It’s when he stops breathing - starts heaving and stuttering through inhales, failing to find air correctly, falling into black-spotted vision - that he decides to do something other than lay there and will it all to stop - to _not_.

He’s tethered, though, pinned to the corkboard of his own misery. The recorder no longer exists, but its implication lingers, heavy and heady, like the Rorschach bloom of blood beneath struck flesh. Like the imprint left on a dilated pupil from a flash-of-too-bright light. An echo that _is_ , and so can only be _not_ Michael’s. Can only be his god, his forsaking voyeur delighting in his anguish. 

“Go _away_ ,” he mumbles, deja-vu loitering most unwelcomingly on the tip of his tongue, which also tastes absolutely _awful_.

His stomach, too, gnaws a very loud complaint, and Jon recalls that - biscuits aside - he has not eaten since the last meal Nikola forced down his throat. 

He’d been abducted for a month, but no one has explained how long it’s been since _Michael_ , then the Institute, then back here, and _Michael again_. The acidic emptiness in his gut is indication enough that it’s been far too goddamn long, and he resolves to return to the kitchen.

Or, actually, the living room, an amendment he swiftly makes upon standing and finding his balance is next to nonexistent. The room vaults and sways, but he clambers his way to the door, through it, and toward the Digestives beckoning on the coffee table.

He reaches them.

And - oh, Martin’s tea is still there. And, inexplicably, this astounds him. Because Martin is not here; Jon sent him away - _forced_ him away - so by all accounts and unreasoning - and for the fact that Michael acquainted its pilfering fingers into the mug, as well - the tea should have been disrupted. Filled with more plastic eyes, perhaps, or turned to grey, squirming sludge. Instead, it rests innocuously in a ring of its own cooling, brown contents - another memory for the table.

No, wait, never mind. Jon sighs dejectedly. It would appear that all previous stains are gone. Of course. Why not. So now it’s only Martin’s, only his mug for evidence. Sure.

“Never let it be said you’re _subtle_ ,” he accuses. 

It’s irrelevant, anyway - irreconcilable - and he has the Digestives, so he rewards his efforts by teetering haphazardly onto the table-side sofa and devouring the last of the pack. Stale, chocolaty, _fucking delicious_. He almost cries for their normalcy, but his mouth is full, and he really doesn’t want to choke.

He’s just scarfed down the last biscuit when it dawns on him that, well shit, there wasn’t a sofa was there. They’d been at the counter, earlier, him and Martin. That’s where their tea was. That’s where it stained itself.

There’s no counter, when he gets the nerve to actually look, the cramped flat assuming a more open concept without it. 

There’s no tea, either, when he resigns himself to these truths and tosses the empty Digestive packet onto the table. 

There’s the stain, though. That remains. Leaking from itself, ever outward, in a cacophony of watery, pale brown splashes. He watches them, for their certainty, for what they mean. Even as they threaten ~~fractally~~ he does not look away. 

At some point, he registers that it’s night, because he can’t see the rest of the room, nor his hands wringing the very pulses from each other in his lap. He can see the stain. Though it’s starting to dry. 

Somewhere well past midnight and on into the wee hours of morning, he realizes he is afraid. To look away. To deny the stain its audience. To relegate it to assumption. To starve it of context, _his_ context, and the tedious ways it tethers him to reality, holds him whole in these waning, wretched hours. 

He also knows that he needs to _not_ be doing this. Needs to sleep. Needs to eat. Needs to replenish his life from his lost month else he’ll never come out of this. He can’t put the burden of his entire self on Martin - today (yesterday?) has well proven that. They barely endured an afternoon in each other’s company, and here he is staring at spilled milk (and bergamot and sugar and biscuit crumbs), as though he might divine a solution from the carnage.

The best he can manage is to keep staring, but doing so while also curling himself, fetally, on the ~~sofa~~ ottoman. It’s cramped and awful and he does not sleep, but that’s not the point. It’s the illusion that matters. To _him_ , it matters, and that _has_ to be enough.

For now, it just has to.

~~_without_ ~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for Questionable Kissing, but it's not extensive, those fun times are for next chapter ;]

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make my life, I'd love to hear back <3


End file.
